Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

Not everybody agreed with Truman’s policies or appreciated his blunt prairie demeanour, but – as his motto indicated – at least they knew where he stood. The same could be said for another, more recent, US chief executive whose shoot-from-the-lip style causes his intelligence to be widely (and sometimes justifiably) underestimated.

The US system of government promotes political responsibility, regardless of what one may think about the policies it produces. There may be a lot of blame-gamesmanship between the White House and Congress, but everyone understands who is in charge – and who bears the ultimate political responsibility to the citizenry. The president.

But, in the EU, there is always someone to whom the buck, or in this case euro, can be passed. Power is dispersed among the institutions, and there are too many people in conflicting leadership roles.

Who is really running the show? Is it the president of the European Commission? The prime minister of the country holding the rotating presidency of the EU? Or the president of the Parliament?

From Tony Blair to Javier Solana to Romano Prodi, it seems everyone has an idea of how to address the EU’s ‘presidency problem’, which I believe is part of the reason for its similarly alliterative ‘democratic deficit’. Even after you weed out the less powerful people holding the P-word title, the EU still has two ‘presidents’ who can claim to be in charge: the one running the Commission and the other at the head of the summit table.

Just to make things slightly more confusing and less accountable, the latter individual changes every six months and just might run a country with little or no military and only a few hundred thousand people living in it.

France and Britain have proposed scrapping this rotating presidency system – in which countries take turns running Council meetings, setting the Union’s policy priorities and distributing smart tote bags at summits. Instead the two Union superpowers want a full-time president of the EU, who would be elected by member states for a term of up to five years.

At first glance, this seems a brilliant way to streamline the decision-making process, consolidate political responsibility and make things a lot easier to follow. There’s just one problem: the EU already has someone who goes around calling himself ‘Mr President’ and posing for grip-and-grin photos with other world leaders. That’s the head of the European Commission.

The current holder of that title, Prodi, has been busy looking for ways to consolidate the Commission’s – and, by extension, his own – power. In his submission to the Convention on the future of Europe, the EU’s would-be chief executive sought more say over foreign policy and taxation, among other things.

Meanwhile, others are looking for ways to bring the Union closer to the people, perhaps even by directly electing the Commission president. Prodi apparently senses a change is inevitable. He used an interview with an Italian newspaper last week as an excuse to get political, saying that “the left must learn that it can no longer be a slave to its own past”.

One might easily apply this same dictum to the EU institutions, but the Financial Times interpreted it differently, suggesting Prodi is plotting a return to national politics in his home country.

Prodi’s advisers insist he’ll serve out his term and, despite a brief flurry of speculation late last year to the contrary, there seems little chance he’ll step down. (Interesting side note: Most people know what happens if an American president resigns or dies while in office. The vice-president takes over, no matter what the condition of his cardiovascular system may be. But what if the Commission’s chief executive leaves office before the end of his term? Would there be a contest between veeps Neil Kinnock and Loyola de Palacio to replace him? No. According to the treaty, member states would simply nominate another president who, subject to approval from the European Parliament, would serve out the remainder of the term. Amaze your friends and win bar bets with this knowledge.)

Publicly the Commission continues the charade that it is ‘above’ politics. But Prodi surely realises that any titular head of the EU will have to be someone with a popular mandate – either a directly elected Commission chief or a Union super-president. In other words, he’s brushing up on his campaign skills.

Whether or not they are ardent federalists or foaming-at-the-mouth eurosceptics, Europe’s citizens keep saying loudly and clearly that they want accountability from their leaders.

The desk of a powerful president – and only one of them – may be the best place for the eurobuck to stop.